It was the first day of high school and already I felt overwhelmed, not by the people or chaos, but because I already had so many assignments. I felt cheated because my middle school did nothing to prepare me for the amount of work that we would have. Throughout middle school, I was unprepared even despite having qualified for AIG (academically and intellectually gifted) enrichment program. In fact, I did not notice any emphasis on academics at all. The school invested in athletics and entertainment, yet no published author has ever visited my classroom to inspire us to love language and self-expression. The only thing I have noticed to have increased in my eight years of schooling was business. Tests multiplied in geometric progression, but my love of math has not grown much because of that. No wonder many students get so fed up by this drudgery that they drop out of high school before even finishing.
Why is it that school can feel overwhelming yet not truly challenging in a good sense? Not only that but the school system barely changed over time except for the introduction of complex testing delivered through technology. According to Dream of A Nation American “educational system has not changed much since the 1900s”, which tells me that it can not adequately prepare the future generation for the new challenges ahead. Modern life has a whole set of problems that cannot be solved by people who are poorly educated and are neither creative nor critical thinkers.
The most obvious problem with public education in the U.S. is standardized testing. Students do not develop any real skills but instead, are trained to be mindless test takers. It’s as if it were done on purpose to let students down by forcing them to memorize irrelevant data and bubble in answers on tests that contribute nothing to their self-development and preparedness for the future. Modern school system restricts students’ creativity and leaves no room for enhancing their problem-solving skills. What I believe is happening currently is that the majority of my generation are simply prevented from becoming able and active participants in a democratic process because their thinking is programmed to be predictable and manipulable due to their schooling focused on standardized tests.
With this being said, visionaries and activists still believe that the system can work if there is a real honest will to invest in the children i.e the future: “Despite the big, tough challenges for our public education system, I am convinced that we are at the verge of a transformation. This is still America—we have unparalleled resources, and “change” is in our DNA. We know the way to fix this, and Americans are awakening to the challenge and finding the will to tackle it” (Canada 149). Geoffrey Canada, whose words I have just quoted, has spent his life helping kids in the poorest neighborhoods of New York to get a proper education and have equal opportunities just like the more privileged children. Another major problem is equality in education “Equality in education is very important, and yet often the poorest neighborhoods in which the kids need the most opportunities have the poorest schools.” It is understandable that this is something one should expect from a title one school, but don’t children in a poor neighborhood deserve more opportunities? It would be very beneficial for the government to invest more in the poorest schools because the people that go there are part of our future too. Canada’s foundation the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), started in 2004, oversees every stage of the poor children’s development by direct sponsorship, placement in charter schools, individual tutoring, and family support. This multifunctional and customized approach to solving educational problems shows great potential.
However, economic equality is not the only problem. Educating gifted students cannot be neglected either because they can contribute more to the future of the nation if they are trained properly and not left to vegetate through all the years of their schooling. It is important to group children by levels of ability, at least in some of the classes, in order to cultivate their strengths. Poorly motivated and disruptive students distract the stronger ones from learning. This does not contradict what I have said in the previous paragraph because separating children according to aptitude still guarantees equal education. In his article, Let's Go Back to Grouping Students by Ability Barry Garelick states that “grouping students according to ability -- a practice viewed by many in the education establishment as synonymous with tracking -- has been almost completely eliminated in K-8. Instead, most schools practice full inclusion, which means educators are expected to teach students with diverse backgrounds and abilities in the same classroom using a technique known as "differentiated instruction” (2). Although this sounds like equality, the result is eliminating “the achievement gap by eliminating achievement” (2). What is ironic in this educational approach is that by trying to make everyone feel good about their “would be” achievement, student skills and knowledge of grammar, math, history and many other subjects have declined dramatically in the past decade. By not investing in educating the able and willing everyone is growing less educated. Unless they take education into their own hands.
I do not mean to sound arrogant but I would wish to gain a lot more from my years in school As part of this generation in which education is so programmed and standardized, it worries me if I will truly be able to change the world in some little way when I grow up. Will my poor education be enough to bring out the person I really am. If I am going to grow up shallow and unimaginative I will not even be able to teach children younger than me not to end up like me. Does this mean our world cannot progress further? I believe that before it is too late it is time to take education into my own hands and direct it towards my own goals.